The Engineering Leadership Podcast

In this episode, we’re resharing one of the most popular & exciting sessions from ELC Annual 2023, featuring a panel of experts discussing what software dev will look like in the decades to come! This conversation features Tara Hernandez, VP Developer Productivity @ MongoDB; Erik Meijer, Sr. Director of Engineering @ Meta; and Jocelyn Goldfein, Managing Director @ Zetta Venture Partners. They deba...

We discuss expanding your leadership capabilities to support total business growth & career visualization with Prashanthi Padmanabhan, Head of Engineering @ LinkedIn Premium and Global Women in Tech Lead @ LinkedIn. Prashanthi dissects her career journey & leadership growth practices like creating a half-pager to visualize your potential career path, developing value-based leadership skills, ident...

Matt Greenwood, Chief Innovation Officer & Head of Investment Management Engineering @ Two Sigma shares some of the most unique and valuable cultural practices behind how the engineering org operates at Two Sigma. We discuss strategies that prepare you for scaling (like intentional relationship-building with your front-line managers); examples of how Two Sigma successfully deployed the “Inverse Co...

In this episode, we are deconstructing the “first team approach” with Monica Bajaj, VPE @ Okta. We cover how to apply “first team" across your org, within different team functions (including architecture, quality, security, etc.) and across all levels. She also shares real-life examples from her experience with “first teams” in scenarios like onboarding new teams after M&As, developing new product...

In one of our most anticipated conversations of the year, we got the chance to sit down with three of Spotify’s eng leaders: Krisitan Lindwall, Director of Engineering, Data, Insights, Experimentation, & ML Infrastructure; Mark Grey, Senior Staff Engineer; and Pooja Dave, Director of Engineering, Music Promotion. They share insights from their experience building a culture of experimentation & inn...

Laura Tacho, CTO @ DX, joins us to discuss why changing what you measure doesn’t necessarily lead to improved productivity (and what to do about it)! How to define and measure productivity in your eng org is one of the hottest topics for eng leaders… We cover best practices for identifying what productivity looks like in your org, what motivates your team to reach those goals, how to harness behav...

Andrew Lau, CEO & Co-founder @ Jellyfish, shares the engineering management principles that eng leaders will most want to develop and invest in as we transition from 2023 into 2024. We cover year-end reflection techniques, how eng leaders can become more resilient / adaptable, why honing financial acumen is key, and how eng leaders can better plan ahead to face upcoming technology & industry chall...

As the Field CTO & Head of Strategy @ VAST Data, Colleen Tartow, Ph. D., has a vast resume of building data engineering teams from scratch and beyond. Colleen discusses the necessary components for developing new or reorienting existing data programs, strategies for effective communication & collaboration between data & eng functions, the implications of AI technology on data engineering, and inte...

In this episode, Emad Elwany, CTO & Co-founder @ Lexion, joins us to discuss navigating the messy  “in-between” phase startups face as they scale up! We talk about the dilemma between optimizing for vertical or horizontal teams. And we cover his approach for aligning teams based on strategic themes / “complete units of value” on the company’s product roadmap and navigating trade-offs when choosing...

Scott Woody, co-founder and CTO @ Metronome, shares the story of how Metronome, a small startup, made the transition to quickly operate at a global scale while working with complex, public companies. He shares the origin story of Metronome and the roadmap of how they went from early-stage engineering to creating highly specialized teams & in-house experts. Additionally, we cover how to navigate th...

In this episode, Jill Wetzler shares practices and principles to help you become a great coach! As an Executive Coach & former VP of Engineering, Jill shares how attending her first coaching workshop impacted her career trajectory and the frameworks she uses to help create a mindset of possibility, foster positive relationships, cultivate trust, navigate threats, and help people think about the fu...

Kathleen Vignos, VP of Software Engineering @ Capital One, shares how to overcome executive leadership gaps that prevent eng leaders from advancing to the next level in their career. She covers how she applies a portfolio approach to career growth, how that helped her build exec skills in a way, and tips for people who are reorienting their approach to career growth. We also cover how to bridge es...

James Everingham, co-founder and VP of Engineering @ Lightspark, joins our podcast to share his best tools for scaling yourself down – not up – as an engineering leader. He discusses his latest career move shifting down in scale and how that impacts your risk tolerance as a leader. We also cover some of James’ favorite leadership methods, including the Socratic method, principle-based decision-mak...

Pete Peterson, CTO @ Riviera Partners, joins our podcast to discuss strategies for gaining stakeholder buy-in in complex stakeholder environments. He shares his experience working as the CIO for the City of Oakland & how he navigated implementing change across 30+ departments & stakeholders. We cover how to find collaborators who share your vision, why quick wins are important for gaining stakehol...

Data leader and author of Self Advocacy: Your Guide to Getting What You Deserve at Work , Shailvi Wakhlu, joins us to discuss practical strategies for becoming a better self-advocate & skills to help you improve negative self-talk and prioritize your happiness. Shailvi also reveals the different types of self-advocacy and how eng leaders can empower/coach their teams to become better self-advocate...

Clemens Mewald, Head of Product @ Instabase, joins our podcast to share his insights on how to embrace generative AI tools to enhance engineering leadership, productivity, and problem-solving. We also chat about creative ways to implement GenAI beyond simply chatbots, questions to ask when deciding how to leverage GenAI capabilities, rethinking the productivity aspect of generative AI, and how to...

Navigating catastrophes is never easy for eng leaders, but it’s an essential leadership skill in the startup world. Ken Pickering, SVP of Engineering @ Starburst Data, discusses navigating catastrophe, and uncertainty and building a culture of resiliency within startups & eng teams. We cover how to embrace challenges / failure, and cultivate centralized beliefs within your org. Plus the challenges...

Jamie Tischart, CTO @ Bettercloud, discusses how to identify inefficiencies within your eng org & strategies for creating more efficient teams! He shares his experience at Bettercloud as one of several concurrent senior hires & why he discovered that coordination is key when hiring multiple new senior hires at once. We also chat about strategies for identifying / removing barriers that are getting...

Hubert Palan, Founder & CEO @ Product Board, discusses how to achieve successful collaboration between product and eng teams! He addresses the elements that make up healthy collaboration, common areas of tension between product & eng, and steps for aligning the teams on product vision, tooling, and processes. We also cover strategies for engineering leaders who want to contribute more to their bus...

In this episode, Bhawna Singh, CTO @ Okta, deconstructs lessons learned from her experience operating in a high-stakes,  high-scale environment. She shares strategies for re-architecting your product roadmap, collaborating with customers, first setting up guardrails while scaling, and communicating throughout the prioritization conversation process. We also cover the important principle of “secure...

In this episode, Ritu Bhargava, Chief Product Officer, CX/CRM @ SAP, joins us to discuss collaboration, relationship building, and navigating conflicts in large-scale organizations with competing priorities. We cover Ritu’s philosophy regarding building bridges between people, how to gain buy-in toward your priorities, unlocking support from fellow exec leaders, and how to address conflicts & comp...

This episode features all things security with our guest, Laura Bell Main, CEO & Founder @ SafeStack. She shares valuable strategies for building your security team & tool stack. We cover why security is a human problem based on human motivations, prioritization conversations for assessing risks, considerations for early-stage security teams, how behavior change & decision making impact security,...

In this episode, Jessica McKellar, CTO & Founder @ Pilot, shares her story as a serial founder and the lessons that can help you become a more impactful, strategic business contributor & eng leader. She reveals strategies for identifying your company’s ideal end state & the steps needed to achieve product-market fit, daily practices that help measure important metrics, business-building discipline...

Alamelu Radhakrishnan reveals her best frameworks for making great decisions quickly without fear in one of our favorite ELC Annual sessions last year. She covers her threefold approach to knowing when to make a decision, pitfalls & anti-patterns to avoid throughout the decision-making process, and strategies for delegating and avoiding decision fatigue, all while working around fear of failure &...

Prachi Gupta, VP of Engineering @ Discord, shares her best strategies for growing your career & leadership skills through transitions, moderated by Chris Chiu, Director of Engineering - Collaboration @ Figma. Prachi and Chris also cover what tactics work well for building community & leading in a remote / hybrid environment, frameworks for operating during wartime, recruiting with the whole person...